The Witch Tree, page 9
Thursday mornings, Eli’d swing into the office, then talk with Lester. Moments later, he’d march out the back, a messenger bag slung from his shoulder. Eli, the shop go-fer.
“Just running their paper, paying all the bills,” Eli’d told him. But why only once a week? No, moving the “real” business out of the office for safekeeping, that would make sense.
But where would they keep it? He’d have to break in when the “real” paper was still around, so, a Wednesday night. Maybe next week?
There was the plastic crash of the phone behind him, then the creak of Lester’s chair.
Lester came to the window, and he cocked his arm up, the charred holes there. Bared his forearm, exposing this – new – burn, near his elbow, a scarred pink medallion, bleeding.
“Your bully boy out there,” he said, “you tell him cut out the shit, or it’ll get ugly, understand?”
17
The morning following, he slipped into Sally’s car half past seven, pulled the door shut behind him. He’d called in sick, waited for Eli to leave the apartment, then headed over. He shot the rain from his fingers, ran his hands down the sleeves of his jacket. It was raining again, a veritable downpour.
He’d bought breakfast, and they sat eating, Buck wondering how he’d get Sally to move the car.
“Why don’t we go for a drive?” he suggested, as if it had just now occurred to him. “Do a little sightseeing, say, take in the–” he grinned “–‘World’s Largest Ball of Twine,’ in Darwin?”
“Very funny, my Buckeroo,” Sally replied, “and, anyway, I’ve got to be at work at one.”
“Yes, but where are you going – and soon?”
“Out to my brother’s in Seattle,” Sally sang back brightly, it having become a refrain in their conversations.
“So, we’ll drive around a little, get you ready for…. Well, driving out there. What do you say?”
She bent into the windshield, as if she’d been told to look for something, but there was only the rain-streaked glass. “Now, in the rain?”
“Come on.”
“No. I can’t. Really.”
“Open the windows, let the fresh air in. We’ll sing with the birds. Make like Crosby and Hope.”
She pointed to her extension cord. There was her electricity to think about, now that she’d gotten it back, she said. And her parking space. She reminded him that, for her, the car wasn’t just a car, it was her “home, sweet home.”
“And, anyway, we’re blocked in,” she said. “That guy, in front me? With the truck.”
“I can fix that,” he said.
“No, you can’t. How could you?”
“Why, lil’ missy,” he said, “you just watch.”
He got into the truck and, in seconds, he’d moved it to the opposite side of the street and jogged back. Out front of the Caddy, feeling jaunty, he danced a little jig in the rain.
“See?” he said, slipping inside. “Easy as pie.” Only she was frowning at him now, altogether nonplussed.
“Please,” she said, and turned to him. “Don’t tell me how you know how to do that, and you won’t have to lie. Okay?”
She waggled her head, weighing it all out. The rain had intensified, and the cars whooshed wetly going by in the street.
“So, Twenty One Questions, since we’re in the car,” Sally said, “and I get to ask one first, okay?”
“Uh-huh.”
“So, does this… ‘driving around’” she said, “have anything to do with your ‘Saving the World’?”
“Yes,” he told her, just that.
“All right then,” Sally said, “I’ll do it.”
He directed her toward Hennepin, into the rush hour traffic. A block south of the shop, he had her pull over, the Paradise in sight. Sally looked around her, nervous, her hands darting.
“What’s here?” she asked.
“Just wait,” he said. The windshield wipers tocked against the rain, the one on the right squeaking.
“I don’t know if I can do this,” Sally said, her shoulders drawn up and her breath coming short.
“You drive to work, don’t you?”
“That’s… different. There aren’t… killers… or whatever after me then. See? How I figured that out?”
“Killers?”
“You know,” she said, in her sing song voice, “Lions, tigers, and bears, oh my; psychopaths, sociopaths, murderers and–”
“Where?”
Sally pointed to the Paradise.
“They’ll never see us,” he scoffed, “two nobodies in Tonto Town, in a ‘gold in color’ Eldo, during rush hour,” but it fell flat, granted Vern was in the yard – or was it Cleve? – fully looking the part.
“Okay” Sally said, her voice rising, “now that really, really, really isn’t helping, old Buckeroo, that creepy one there, he’s looking right at me. He is. So, say something, say it now, or–”
And out of him came a song, in a high, quavering falsetto, that old warrior’s tune, the one he’d sung at St. Mary’s.
Wabik owibiyan
Manido nindanisa
Wabik owibiyan
It was so arresting and otherworldly, Sally froze at the wheel, then, blinking, turned to him.
“Sing it again,” she said.
And he did, only Sally sang now, too, in harmony with him, her voice clear, and ringing.
When she glanced over at him, she said, “How can you stand it?”
“Stand what?”
“Having lost… everything?”
“I haven’t – yet,” he said. “It’s why I’m here. And… it’s why you’re here, too. Because, you haven’t either, right?”
A good twenty minutes later, Eli’s sedan pulled out from behind the Paradise, turned right.
“Follow that–” he pointed through the windshield “–green car there,” he told Sally. Eli was driving as he never did; slowly, carefully, sitting erect, his hands at ten and two on the wheel.
“That Pontiac there,” she said. “All sparkly, and like a giant lime popsicle, that one?”
“That’s it.” Lime popsicle?
“Like in a spy show?”
“Sure,” he told her, “like in a spy show.”
“So, who is it?”
With a shrug, he said, “It’s my brother, Eli,” and Sally cocked her head, trying to make sense of it.
At a stop light, Sally pulled all but even with Eli, and he dropped below the dash, on the floor pop tops from cans, candy wrappers, and General Tzo’s bags from the dinner he’d bought days before.
“Goddammit, Sally!” he said. “I didn’t tell you to pull up alongside him.” It wasn’t funny, not at all, but he was on the verge of nervous laughter. “And you need to clean this out.”
“You said ‘don’t lose him’ so I was just catching up. And, anyway, this light goes on forever. She smiled, poked him in the side, amused. “How about if I give him the finger, just for fun?”
“Don’t – you – dare.”
“Ah, he’s looking over here, wondering who I’m talking to. Why,” she said, turning to him, “it’s my little Buckaroo, who’s, just now, misbehaving. ‘You behave yourself now.’”
“Sally,” he said.
“I can tease too,” she replied. “I think he knows me, or he seems to. He’s looking at me like he knows me.”
“He doesn’t know you,” he said. “You’re a pretty girl in a yellow Cadillac making eyes at him.”
“No?” she said. “Or maybe he thinks I know him? I mean, he looks like somebody – Charles Bronson, that’s who! Maybe I should wink at him, what do you think?”
“Don’t do that.”
“Well, what fun are you?”
“Believe me, that’d be worse.”
“Why?”
“Because then he’d remember you for sure, okay?”
“He just put a hat and sunglasses on. Yeah, you go there, Secret Agent. You know, he really does looks like…”
The car started and, after a time, he looked up over the dashboard. Now Eli was so distant, just a glittering green spot in a mass of chrome and color, there was a possibility of losing him.
“Those old Pontiacs,” Sally told him now, “they remind me of refrigerators. All square like that. Only, his is – hmmm – psychedelic avocado green, that’s it.”
Buck laughed, he couldn’t help it. Eli’s car was one he was proud of, a GTO. It was just like Eli to have it. A temperamental, showy old boat of a car. And that glittery paint?
Sally sped through traffic, closing the gap between them, and Sally now singing to herself, “You’re not getting away from me, you old ice box of a car, I’ll show you a thing or two.”
Buck laughed again, it was all just getting away from him.
“What’s so funny?”
Pointing to the car ahead of them, a white Mercedes, he said, “What about that one?”
“That’s a… nurse’s shoe,” she said, and nodded.
He pointed to a BMW. “And that one?”
“Pack of razorblades.”
“Wonderful.”
She glanced over at him and smiled, in it a show of perfectly white teeth, pleased with herself. She sat up behind the wheel, as is she were captaining some ship, enjoying herself. “What?”
“If only you knew.” Cars, in his world now, were a very unfunny, dangerous business.
Eli stopped at a number of places: A medical practice, hospital-white and black shutters; a law office, all brushed aluminum and glass. And an auto supply store. Buck jotted down the addresses. Eli took the highway back into the city, then parked in front of the County Courthouse, a squat, sandstone building with deep, inset windows. Went in carrying a briefcase.
Time stretched interminably, Sally bent on something, drumming on the wheel again.
“Okay,” Buck said, finally, “we’ll head home, all right?”
Sally shook her head. “Just wait,” she said. She’d backed up a full block, so they wouldn’t be seen.
“There he is,” Sally said, pointing, a note of excitement in her voice. Eli ducked into his car.
They followed him to a wrecking yard, cars everywhere like carcasses of dinosaurs, or giant metal insects. Eli parked in front of the office, a tan brick building on which advertisements had been painted, one reading, A Shave That’s Real No Cuts To Heal Burma Shave.
Eli knocked at the door, and someone put his head out. He looked both directions, then took the magazine-sized envelope Eli’d held up. Sky blue, and a logo there, a white triangle.
“Do they see us?” Sally asked.
“No,” he told her, but he was anything but sure. He’d had her park in a driveway of a house adjoining.
Eli turned out of the yard and, minutes later, a Cadillac Seville – you couldn’t miss it for the spare tire bustle on the trunk – pulled up to the office. The earlier-only-a-head jogged out, envelope in hand, and the driver put down his window, then plucked it from him.
The head nodded, then again, the two agreeing on something, and the Seville pulled smartly away.
But not before Buck got a look at the driver – Dr. Miller, in a tan raincoat and a Greek fisherman’s cap.
“Follow him,” he said, “but stay back.”
“‘Vhat, he’s some old Nazi or zome-zing?’” Sally said, and jokingly barred her teeth. “And how far back?” It was a trick question, and he gave her the answer she wanted.
“Way back,” he said.
18
There was an especial everydayness to the doctor’s stops. To a liquor store, where he picked up a bottle of wine – they could see, through the windows fronting the street, Miller lifting it off a shelf. And to a clothing shop, Whimsy, where he bought a scarf, the silk blue, and on it off white lilies, and green lily pads, Miller drawing it over his outstretched hand.
At a coffee shop on France Avenue in the 50th block, Dr. Miller ducked inside. Chatted with the counter jock, then took a table in an alcove overlooking the street, a coffee steaming at his elbow. From inside his coat, he got out the envelope, frowned at the logo, then shucked smaller, business-sized envelopes from it, slit each with a letter opener and shook out what was in it.
Only, this one, now, this letter had set his mouth in a hard, cutting line, his features bunched.
“Oh, oh,” Sally quipped, “Lurch isn’t happy.”
Buck shook his head, “Sally” he warned, cutting her off. But Miller did bear a resemblance. He was tall, his eyes sunken in his head, and his cheeks hollow and his left hand twisted to the point of deformity.
“Okay,” Sally quipped. “So… this guy’s kind of a big, ol’ sourpuss, one of those angry men, what of it?
“He’s going to use the phone now, chew somebody out,” she said, enjoying herself. “You just watch.”
He was thinking – Why do this here? Payphone, no record – when Sally threw her door open.
He reached for her, and she ducked out, swung the door shut and dodged across the busy street into the shop. His heart in his throat, he thought to rush out after her, but couldn’t.
God-dammit, Sally, he thought, just – ?!
Miller went to the phone, a pegboard there, aprons hanging from it. When he turned, Sally snatched one, got it on, then strode to the alcove where, with a towel, she cleaned, lifting Miller’s letters.
One in hand, she read top to bottom, glanced out the window and caught his eye, and shrugged.
Seconds later, Miller was back, and Sally bowed, as if to brush something off her apron, and he bumped into her, throwing her off balance. He caught her arm, to prevent her from falling, and there they were, just having a little tete-a-teet, exchanging pleasantries.
Well, if that didn’t just do it, he thought. Miller’d seen her now, and worse yet, in a way he’d remember.
Now, Sally was back with two steaming cups. “Coffee, my treat,” she said, handing Buck his. “And don’t say anything. It’s done. And, anyway,” she quipped, “I got what you wanted.”
“What were you talking about?” He pried the lid off his coffee and took a sip, trying to make light of it.
“Oh, we chatted about school, and the weather, and what crime family he was part of. The Calabrese or….” Sally smiled. “Or was it the… Gambinos? Whether he preferred using a knife or a gun.
“And he prefers a knife, usually.”
“Drive,” he said.
Sally settled behind the wheel, delighted. “Come on, he’s just an old guy, doing business.”
“He’s not that old.”
“What happened to his hand?”
“Right,” Buck replied. “Twisted, by the war I guess. And if he’s… old, what does that make me?”
“You,” Sally said, “are a man in your prime. A specimen. A force to be reckoned with.”
Buck laughed, but it came out wrong.
“It’s all numbers.” She looked over her cup. “What he had there. He’s a doctor, right?”
“I guess,” he said.
Sally, studying Miller, scrunched up her face, said, “He reminds me of my dad – so many of them are like that, you know? Engineers and doctors, so… certain. What’s his name?”
“Sally–”
“Actually, I feel sort of… sorry for him. On the phone, he was saying he needed to fill a prescription. Pain meds, it couldn’t wait. He’s got to travel for business and he’s leaving in the morning.
“If they could courier it over–”
“Sally,” he said, “let’s go.”
She lifted her coffee, said, “Can’t I at least finish? We girls rarely get to finish, isn’t that right?” She grinned over her cup, sipped from it, taking her time, then pointed to a car pulling into the lot.
“Oh, I’ll bet that’s the courier.”
His hair in braids, he swept into the shop, a boy of ten or so in tow. The two went to the counter, where the father bought the boy a drink, then to Dr. Miller’s table. The shinob pulled out chairs and they sat, the boy swinging his white and black hightops, as if marking out time.
A young couple ducked in out of the rain, and the counter jock ushered them to the table opposite Miller’s.
Miller jabbed his finger into the table, making a point, and the shinob lifted his hands.
“‘Old friends,’” Sally sang, in that sweet voice of hers, “‘sitting on park benches like book ends….’”
The shinob stood, brushed down his pants, then went around the divider to the phone, where he carried on a conversation, at one point lifting his balled fist, all but barking into the phone.
In the alcove, Miller lifted his letter opener. With a flick of his wrist, he had it under the boy’s chin. Glaring, he said – something terrible – and the boy, startled, let out a cry, and the shinob rushed to the table. Swung his boy out the door – and the couple, menus in hand, turned.
Kids! Miller said, waving a menu at them, What they won’t eat?! and the couple and Miller laughed.
You could almost believe none of it with the boy had happened, Miller was that quick.
“I feel positively… sick, having seen that,” Sally said, and she glanced over at him. “Is he your problem?”
“Drive,” he said, and Sally pulled from the curb.
“Well?” she said and, again, glanced over at him, “is he? And don’t lie. You can lie by omission, you know.”
“He’s part of it,” he said, “though, if it were only him, don’t you think I’d have set things right already?”
“Is it safe?” Sally asked, on Dupont in her usual spot. “After he saw me like that? AM I SAFE?
“You’d better say something,” Sally said. “And don’t say it’s just business, because that wasn’t just business.”
He pressed his index finger and thumb into his eyes, thinking, and none of it was good.
“Well?!” Sally blurted. “Am I, or am I not safe?! Because, really, I should call the police.”
“You don’t want to do that,” he said.
“And why not?”
She looked off into the street, which, just now, seemed all the more dark and dangerous.
“Keep your doors locked, and if you’re… bothered, take off,” he told her, “don’t wait. Drive over to Archie’s on Lake Street, I’ll find you there. But you’ll be safe here for now.”
